Desperate New York City Mayor Eric Adams has pleaded with a judge to end the city’s longstanding ‘right to shelter’ law as he struggles to house more than 122,000 migrants who have flooded the Big Apple since last year.
Adams, 63, sent a letter Tuesday evening urging a judge to dismiss the city’s legal obligation to provide shelter to adults, claiming the 1981 law should be void in a state of emergency.
The letter, sent to New York Supreme Court justice Erika Edwards, warned that the huge influx ‘shows no signs of abating’, while citing a staggering 159 percent increase in the number of people in the city’s care since April 2022.
As he scrambles for solutions, Adams travelled south of the border on Wednesday in an attempt to deter migrants from moving to New York City after entering the US.
Adams’ anguish over the situation is a stark contrast to his previous public posturing over migrants, where he claimed only a year ago that he was ‘proud’ to house asylum seekers as he vowed to ‘continue to do that.’
However, the embattled mayor’s letter faced quick backlash from homeless advocacy groups who claimed that the move would ‘gut’ rights offered to homeless people.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, pictured in Mexico on Wednesday, pleaded for the legal obligation to house migrants to be suspended, as he warned that ‘it is abundantly clear that the status quo cannot continue’
Adams travelled south of the border in an attempt to deter migrants from going to New York City after entering the US. He is seen speaking s to the press in front of the Basilica de Guadalupe after a visit to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023
Migrants, who are streaming into NYC at a rate of almost 800 people per day, lineup to enter the Federal Plaza to file with the immigration services this week
Adams has turned to a variety of city landmark hotels and emergency shelters to find room for the 120,000 plus migrants flooding the Big Apple, but warned this week he is ‘at capacity’
The former police officer has seen his time in office plagued by the migrant crisis, as he claimed in his letter that ‘New York City has done more than any other city in the last 18 months to meet this national humanitarian crisis.’
In a statement alongside the letter, Adams added: ‘With more than 122,700 asylum seekers having come through our intake system since the spring of 2022, and projected costs of over $12 billion for three years, it is abundantly clear that the status quo cannot continue.’
Notably, the letter comes in tandem with Adams’ much-publicized four-day trip to Latin America, where he said he intends to tell asylum seekers not to expect ‘five star hotels’ if they move to the Big Apple.
Upwards of 200 emergency shelters – including 17 large-scale humanitarian relief centers – have already reached capacity in the city.
Adams urged Edwards to not only consider temporarily suspending the right to shelter law ‘that present circumstances demand’, but also for the rules to be suspended at any time the governor or mayor declares a state of emergency when there is a surge in people seeking shelter.
He argued that when the right to shelter provisions were passed, they were ‘never intended to apply to the extraordinary circumstances our city faces today.’
The letter was sent to New York Supreme Court judge Erika Edwards, and cited a number of alarming statistics showing the crisis has gotten out of the control of city officials
But with the city’s focus turned squarely on the migrant crisis, which has seen iconic hotels such as the Roosevelt Hotel turned into shelters, homeless advocacy groups warned following Adams’ latest request could be a slippery slope.
The Legal Aid Society, the group that filed the lawsuit that led to the right to shelter law, issued a joint statement with the Coalition for the Homeless condemning the move as a death sentence for protections given to homeless people.
‘This is the city’s most significant and damaging attempt to retreat on its legal and moral obligation to provide safe and decent shelter for people without homes since that right was established 42 years ago,’ the groups said.
‘Street homelessness would balloon to a level unseen in our city since the Great Depression.’
Large numbers of migrants have been forced to sleep rough on the streets of New York City, with families given priority in hotel rooms while shelters reach capacity.
The letter is not the first time that Adams has sought to end the right to shelter mandate, previously requesting changes to the law in May.
Adams cited his previous petition in his letter on Tuesday, noting that the number of migrants who requested shelter from the city since then has soared to around 50,600.
Since April 1, 2022, over 122,700 migrants have flooded New York City looking for shelter, and the total number of people the city has an obligation to house has skyrocketed by 159 percent in the same time frame.
Since May 21, 2023, officials have opened an additional 61 shelters throughout the city and spent over $1.1 billion as they continue struggling with the crisis.
Hundreds of refugees slept outside the Roosevelt Hotel in August when the historic establishment was transformed into a migrant camp
Officials said Tuesday the Roosevelt (pictured in August) currently has 412 people who are waiting for a shelter placement, and many are forced to sleep rough as families are given priority housing
Migrants line up in front of the historic Roosevelt Hotel, converted into a city-run shelter for newly arrived migrant families in New York City, United States on September 27, 2023
Adams announced this week he was set to travel to the US-Mexico border to try and deter more migrants from trying to move to New York City after they cross into America.
He is set to meet with officials in Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia during a four-day trip.
Adams was seen speaking with reporters as he began his trip in Mexico, where attended the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe before he made an appearance at the North Capital Forum to meet with government officials.
He will then travel to Quito, Ecuador, for additional meetings before he heads to Bogotá, Colombia and eventually to the Darien Gap, a dangerous section of the route many South American migrants pass through on their way to the US.
As Adams prepares for his trip south of the border, his office was plunged into controversy as his top aide Ingrid Lewis-Martin appeared to call for the federal government to ‘close the borders’ amid the crisis.
On Tuesday, the mayor walked back these comments as he insisted the border should remain open, but those crossing should be funneled to other cities.
‘We believe the borders should remain open,’ Adams said at a news conference.
‘That’s the official position of this city, but we have made it clear there should be a decompression strategy so that we could properly deal with the volume that’s coming into our city.’
‘We are at capacity,’ Adams added to reporters on Tuesday. ‘We’re going to tell them that coming to New York doesn’t mean you’re going to stay in a five-star hotel.
‘It doesn’t mean that, the mere fact that you come here, you automatically are going to be allowed to work.’
‘I can’t believe that we’re still in the situation that we are talking about how many more sites we want to open. We have 118,000 people that have come to New York City. This is a national and an international crisis,’ said Anne Williams-Isom, New York’s deputy mayor for Health and Human Services.
‘This is a national and an international crisis,’ she added. ‘We really need a decompression strategy, so that as people are coming over, we can send them to other parts of the United States.’
Williams-Isom said that new arrivals of migrants in the city have recently reached 600 to 800 individuals per day, double the previous rate of some 10,000 per month.
Dramatic photos show the moment migrants cross the Rio Grande river from Piedras Negras, Mexico into Eagle Pass, Texas – which has become the epicenter of border crossings in recent times
Many migrants traverse difficult conditions on their way to the US-Mexico border, in hopes of ending up in sanctuary cities such as New York City
While New York City struggles to find room for the deluge, the small Texas town of Eagle Pass has become an epicenter of the unprecedented crossings.
The Texas town of just 28,000 people has been inundated by migrants in recent weeks, with border crossings rising to around 8,000 a day in the week ending September 22, according to the Washington Office of Latin America.
The number of crossings is only matched by April 2023 levels, when pandemic-era immigration policy Title 42 expired.
Similarly to the Big Apple, shelters in border towns like Eagle Pass have been stretched well over capacity due to the thousands of crossings every day.
As officials scramble for solutions, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has led the movement to bus migrants to northern states to share the burden of ineffective border policies while bringing the crisis to national attention.
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